Gracie Gold performs a jump in her senior women's free skate program at the U.S. figure skating championships in Omaha on Saturday. / Nati Harnik AP

by Christine Brennan, USA TODAY Sports

by Christine Brennan, USA TODAY Sports

OMAHA â?? Skating phenom Gracie Gold was not robbed at the U.S. national figure skating championships Saturday night.

Quite the opposite. She was given a great gift. The 17-year-old jumping sensation from Chicago will be sent to her first world championships in March as the future of American figure skating, without the pressure of being the current national champion, but with the enchanting possibility of the Sochi Olympic Games looming early next year.

Gold landed seven clean triple jumps to win the women's long program, but finished second overall to defending champion Ashley Wagner, who fell twice in a shockingly poor long program but had built up a big lead with a solid short program Thursday.

Gold lost the national title by scarcely more than two points while winning the long program by a whopping 11 points over Wagner. Had Gold not fallen once and popped another jump in the short program, she almost certainly would have won the national title.

It was natural to wonder if Wagner's program was overmarked â?? not that that hasn't happened hundreds of times before in the wacky world of figure skating â?? but even if that was the case, Gold's was too. She received very high marks for a program that still lacks the sophistication that should come for her in the next year or two, and those scores allowed her to finish second overall and qualify her for the world championships.

But critics should remember that a figure skating competition comes in two acts, and Wagner dominated Gold in Act 1, the short program, finishing first to Gold's ninth. In the old days of the 6.0 scoring system, there would have been almost no way for Gold to pull up from ninth to second. But with the new points-based system, those kinds of leaps are possible, which is all to the sport's greater good.

Wagner did not think there was any funny business going on with the judges' scores.

"I don't think that the scores were all too generous," she said. "I think that the short program showed that the judges were pretty much on. I've been doing that program all season and I scored 67 at the Grand Prix Final (her score here too), so I feel that the scoring was fairly accurate."

That said, she wasn't a very happy camper.

"It's definitely not the performance I imagined having," she said, "but the fact that I was able to become repeat champion, with those two performances, that's something to be proud of."

Gold, for her part, said she thought she could come back after her "horrifying" short program.

"I actually thought that it could be possible because I have a very loaded long program with difficult elements," she said. "I have a triple lutz-triple toe and a double axel-triple toe with all other triples in the program and I have really nice jumps. And I think I've really improved a lot on my component marks, so I knew if I skated a perfect program, I knew I would be able to pull up into the podium."

Gold will join the now-two-time national champion Wagner at the world championships in London, Ontario, in March, providing what the United States hopes is a strong enough duo to earn three places for Sochi. The Wagner-Gold combination is the best that the U.S. could possibly have imagined: Wagner, the seasoned veteran who finished fourth at last year's worlds and second at the recent Grand Prix Final, combined with Gold, the energetic, confident, almost fearless newcomer.

Wagner and Gold will need to finish with placements that total 13 or better in order to win that third place at the Olympics.

For now, though, the U.S. figure skating community found itself in the delightful position of realizing that it had found a new star with the next Olympics 13 months away. While Wagner -- who is still recovering from a bad fall in December â?? struggled, Gold was a breath of fresh air that blew through the CenturyLink Arena like a spring breeze, with nothing but possibility looming in the most important year ahead.